248 MANUFACTUKES OF KUSSIA. 



CHAPTER XV. 

 The Naphtha Industry. 



^ I ^HE exploitation and treatment of naphtha gives an instance of the rapidity which 

 I mining and industrial enterprise can attain in Eussia, if only the combined 

 circumstances be favourable. In giving a concise discription of this industry, which 

 has already been partially treated in the volume upon the Mining and Metallurgical 

 industries, it is first necessary to mention that the exploitation of raw naphtha is 

 mainly concentrated on the Apsheron peninsula near Baku, although it is also car- 

 ried on, but in a far smaller extent, on the Cuban, in the province of Tersk, and other 

 localities. There are signs of the occurrence of naphtha in many other parts of Eussia 

 besides the Caucasus, but the majority of these localities have not yet been exploited, 

 or even sufficiently surveyed. 



The statistical data of the production of naphtha in past years, especially 

 before the seventies, are not reliable ; and in the more recent data, especially since 

 the yearh' appearance of numerous naphtha fountains from the sinking of wells, 

 there are doubtful figures reaching to as much as several million pouds. In the fifties 

 the production did not exceed 300,000 pouds, and was not under 150,000 pouds. In 

 1860 to 1865 it varied between 300,000 and 800,000 pouds, and in 1865 to 1870, 

 between one and two million pouds per year. Therefore the author only gives the 

 data of the production in millions of pouds, all the more as even in recent years, 

 when the data are collected both by the representatives of the mining and excise 

 offices, and by persons elected at the meetings of the naphtha traders, the estimates 

 from different sources often differ by whole millions of pouds. Moreover, for facilitat- 

 ing comparison, the author adjoins the data for the production, expressed in American 

 barrels, taking the capacity of a barrel at forty gallons. As the weight of a gallon 

 of water is equal to 0.277 Eussiau pouds, therefore a barrel wiU hold 11.08 pouds 

 of water, and as tbe density of the chief mass of the Apsheron naphtha is about 

 0.875, it may be said that a barrel contains on the average 9.7 pouds of naphtha j 

 aud this is the figure taken by the author for expressing the production in barrels. 



